Around The Sphere Blogging Round Up Dec. 4, 2007

Our original link-fest offering readers links to blog posts from websites of many different viewpoints — soon to enter its fourth year. Linked posts do NOT necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its writers.

USA Today has the polling results, and they look even worse for Hillary. In 16 days, she dropped nine points overall. Obama, Edwards, Richardson, and Biden split Hillary’s castoffs almost equally. She dropped eleven points in a month. Her negatives have gone from 44% in October to 50%, and now has a favorability deficit of -3, the worst since the beginning of summer.

It would be a free-fall, if the Democrats had a candidate who could take advantage of Hillary.

What can you attribute this to? A variety of factors, including perhaps that it is increasingly difficult for any candidate of either party to try to do a tightrope act between left and right these days. It isn’t just Hillary hatred. She appeared to have been running a seamless campaign, stumbled, and now appears to be lashing out at Barack Obama. The trouble is, her positives are not high enough to risk driving up her negatives (among voters and the press) to try and drive up Obama’s negatives.

THE CNN/YOU TUBE DEBATES have become highly controversial. aTypical Joe has a must read post. Here’s part of it:

I did not watch the YouTube debates, Democrat or Republican, and I tend to view them as not much more than Big Media big-footing into our media – media made by and for the people and emphatically not rooted in our commercial television system – in an attempt to co-opt and cash-in on us.

Let’s be clear, the network, CNN, picked the questions and shoe-horned the show into its own tried tired and [not] true cable format.

THE LATEST PC PATROL CONTROVERSY involves a 9 year old child in Arizona who is suspended due to hate speech. There is indeed a problem with PC in the United States. There are truly outrageous things said…but there are also those who are ready to leap on anything and make an issue about it. The details of this case suspect the school might be well-served to have their attorneys ready for a seemingly-inevitable lawsuit…
WANNA READ A GREAT INTERVIEW? Be SURE to read Dan Schneider’s great, comprehensive interview with writer Phillip Lopate.

A CLASSY BLOGGER REALLY NEEDS YOUR HELP: Be sure to READ THIS by Gary Farber.

MEANWHILE, A NATIONAL REVIEW REPORTERis also under fire…
WHO’S TO BLAME FOR THE POLARIZATION OF AMERICAN POLITICS? Why, wouldn’t you know, a member of the mainstream media blames the blogs… PSST! There WAS something called talk radio before the blogs. There WERE things called cable and Sunday morning screech-fest shows that showed both sides of the issues by signing up loudmouth partisans who name-call. Many blogs do enjoy going after bloggers and others blogs and they WILL get the traffic. But MOST AMERICANS DO NOT READ BLOGS yet.